Which makes sense: if 56% of the population is going to contract coronavirus in the next eight weeks, then the lockdown is pointless. You're nearly to herd immunity at that point, why cripple the economy if it doesn't even make a dent in the transmission rate.
The title was based on the entirety of the linked content — the letter from the CA governor to the president — which included no context around the numbers being based on no measures being taken.
I suppose a more fully-qualified title might append “in letter to the president”.
But appending “if no measures are taken” is not accurate, since this article — his letter to the president — doesn’t include this context.
Saying the title is sensationalist is equivalent to saying the letter is sensationalist.
And if that is the case, the most you could say is a sensationalist title accurately represents a sensationalist letter.
I agree, it is a reasonable statement and reasonable projection (within an order of magnitude) that reflects the gravity of the situation. A lot of people don’t seem to realize just how big this is about to become.
> ... We project roughly 56 present of our population - 25.5 million people -- will be infected with the virus over an eight week period.
There is no qualification to that statement.
We have outside knowledge with respect to the letter that changes how we understand that number, but it has been rhetorically used in the letter just as it is quoted in the title.
Often times things are sensationalist, or out of context, this is not one of those situations.
It’s reflective of the actual content of the letter.
You better lockdown everyone over 60 during those 8 weeks while everyone else gets infected and recovers then, i.e. you need a lockdown